Family members are often the first people we trust when a career starts getting serious. They know our habits, understand our struggles, and usually want the best for us. But turning that personal bond into a professional working relationship can bring a very different set of challenges.Avanti Nagral’s experience is a case in point. She brought her mother into her professional team, expecting the arrangement to work because of their existing understanding. Instead, she soon realized that the way a parent looks at a child’s career can be very different from what is needed from a manager.
Nagral’s career was getting busier
At the time, Nagral was spending her gap year before Harvard performing through theatre and music across different stages.As her work expanded, she needed help with the practical side of her career. Her responsibilities included emails, rates, logistics, outreach, and operations.Her mother had some free time and offered to help with these responsibilities.Nagral said the idea initially seemed like a good fit. Her mother had reinvented her career several times and understood the effort involved in building a career.But the professional arrangement lasted only two weeks.
Why she ended the arrangement
Nagral explained her decision in a LinkedIn post.“I fired my mom in 2 weeks,” she wrote.She said the issue was not that her mother did not care about her work. Rather, her mother’s concern was influencing the choices being made.“She said no to almost everything, because she felt I deserved much better,” she wrote.Her mother was also cautious about opportunities involving late-night shows, unfamiliar cities, and crowds that she could not vet beforehand.For Nagral, this showed that her mother was approaching the role from a parent’s point of view rather than that of a career manager.“She wasn’t managing my career. She was protecting her daughter. Those are two very different jobs,” Nagral said.
She later found professional support
After ending the arrangement with her mother, Nagral said she eventually worked with managers, agencies, and other professionals.The difference was that these people could focus on her career while keeping her personal life separate from professional decisions.Her experience made her recognize that knowing someone well and being able to manage their career are not necessarily the same thing.
The bigger issue for creatives
Nagral also raised a wider point about the difficulties working artists can face while putting together a professional team.She said there is no real infrastructure that makes it easy for an artist to find the people needed to support their work.“There’s no real infrastructure for a working artist to find their crew,” she wrote.Because of this, creatives may turn to people they already know. A parent, partner, or friend can become the first person asked to help simply because they are willing to take on the responsibility.Nagral’s experience suggests that this can create a difficult line between personal support and professional decision-making.
LinkedIn users respond
Her post also received comments from people sharing their own experiences with family and work.One LinkedIn user spoke about working for Primerica Financial Services and said they eventually brought their parents into the company.“I remember when I used to work for a company called Primerica Financial Services. It was hard at first, but I removed the ‘im’ from impossible and made it possible and never gave up. That is why I also recruited my parents to work in that company,” the user commented.Nagral ended her post by asking others how they found their first team member.The discussion highlights a practical challenge for people building independent careers: finding someone who can support the work is one thing, but finding the right person for a professional role can be another.Disclaimer: This article is based on information shared by Avanti Nagral in her LinkedIn post and the responses to it. The Times of India does not independently verify claims made in social media posts.Thumb image: Instagram/Avanti Nagral
